The Detroit News, a self-described conservative paper that endorsed Sen. John McCain in 2008, endorsed Mitt Romney Thursday, arguing that his 5-point economic plan could jumpstart the economy and saying President Obama has fallen short.
But the paper did pay tribute to Obama’s rescue of the auto industry and said the endorsement of Romney comes “[d]espite his wrong-headedness on the auto bailout.”
Don’t assume that it was a no-brainer for a conservative newspaper to endorse a conservative presidential candidate. We recognize and are grateful for the extraordinary contribution President Obama made to Michigan in leading the rescue of General Motors and Chrysler…
We have said in past editorials that while Romney rightly advocated for structured bankruptcies in his infamous “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” New York Times op-ed, he was wrong in suggesting the automakers could have found operating capital in the private markets. In that article, Romney suggested government-backed loans to keep the companies afloat post bankruptcy. But what GM and Chrysler needed were bridge loans to get them through the process, and the private credit markets were unwilling to provide them…
Had Obama done as well with the rest of the economy, it would be hard to deny him a second term.
